The last few days I’ve been busy setting up the 2015 KPR Observer. I still have a few more todos on my list, in the meantime you can still benefit from the reduced pre-order price of 24$!
In order to give you a better idea of the value that I’ll provide with the KPR Observer updates during the season, here’s a look at two documents with different views on the KPR Rankings: the Graphical View for an overview, and the KPR Table for all the details. Together with my commentary on recent developments and a look at the upcoming races, they make following the KPR very easy and will safe you a ton of time!
Graphical View
The graphical view shows a lot of information on a single page. Here is an example of the Men’s Standing in early July (of course, there is a similar page for women’s qualifying):
Here’s what you can see on this page:
- Automatic Qualifiers (blue)
All the „potential“ Automatic Qualifiers are listed, with my assessment of whether they’ll validate and take their slot. - Projected Cutoff
Based on my projections, I give a projection for the July cutoff (and later for the August cutoff as well). - Safe (green)
Based on the cutoff, the athletes that have a safe Kona slot are listed. Some names are in UPPERCASE, these are new in the category. (For example, Jan Frodeno had just finished third in Frankfurt, thereby fulfilling the requirement of racing at least one IM and also scoring enough points.) - Bubble (yellow)
Athletes that are within a few hundred points of the projected cutoff. If they score a couple hundred more points, they should be able to move into safe territory, but without any points might come up just short. (In fact, all athletes on the bubble made it to Kona after scoring some more points.) - Close (orange)
These athletes are within a thousand points of the cutoff, but do not have enough points for a slot at this point. - Potential (brown)
These athletes are even further back, but are on the start list for one of the remaining IMs, and could secure a slot with a good performance. (For example, Kyle Buckingham got a slot by winning IM Lake Placid.) - Not interested (red)
These athletes may be placed well in the rankings, but have said that they are not interested in a Kona slot. Therefore, they probably won’t validate their slot or further improve their score.
On the bottom there is some background information how far the season has progressed (date, last race, number of completed IMs etc.).
KPR Table
The KPR Table shows similar information, but goes into much more details. Again, here is a look at the men’s standings in early July:
The Table is delivered as Excel spreadsheets (one for the men and one for the women, plus another sheet showing the Points schemes). Some details on the columns in this sheet:
- Rank
For the ranking, I am not counting Automatic Qualifiers (marked “AQ”) and those not interested in a slot (denoted by a “-“), so #40 (for the men) will actually be the last one in a position to receive a July slot. - Validated
This column indicates whether an athlete has already fulfilled the minimum requirement of finishing at least on IM outside of Kona to be eligible for a Kona slot. - Races
In this column I show how many races an athlete already has on his scorecard and which score would drop off the scorecard once another good result is added. - Kona
This is my assessment of the athlete’s chances to get a Kona slot, going from a green up arrow showing a safe slot down to a red down arrow meaning that a Kona slot is very unlikely. - Comments
Some more information about the athlete, e.g. known race plans. - Races1-5, Points1-5
Shows where the athlete scored how many points (only those races that are part of the athlete’s total).
If you purchase the KPR Observer, you’ll receive this information at least six times (and more likely, ten times) as the season progresses, therefore aways staying up to date on recent developments. You still have a few day left to benefit from it’s reduced pre-release price of 24$ at https://gum.co/2015KPR.